


Azof and the Farmer's Wife

by draylon



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-18
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-11-15 16:33:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11234892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draylon/pseuds/draylon
Summary: Post War-of-the-Ring a lonely Farmer's wife meets and befriends an Uruk ex-soldier from Mordor.





	1. The Bride from outside

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this story on another archive a while ago, hence the 2012 posting date.

 

It was the smell of the blood that called him down from the mountain that first time, of course.

It was late in the winter to be sticking a pig, true, but one wily one, gone a bit feral, slipped through the previous autumn’s round-up and though they searched high and low, it stayed missing all through the end of the season.  Pig lasted quite well till the turn of the year - guzzling beech-mast and what-not up in the high forest, but then when the weather closed in it turned tail and headed for home again.  Neighbour Drew, whose farm was up at the top of the valley over on the opposite side, caught it and brought it back to Julienne’s; crafty old sod looked like he might have wanted to keep it himself, but then he and everyone else knew it was only the farmer’s wife who ever raised fancy black porkers like that.

But she didn’t as a rule keep them through the winter: there wasn’t nearly enough forage at her place to sustain them.  The rest of this year’s herd – a dozen strong, for there had been a heavy acorn-crop and an especially good autumn - were all slaughtered and off to market; that, or salted and hanging for ham in the outbuilding beside Julienne’s house.  For a while it looked like she’d be keeping Number Thirteen after all, but late one evening there came a dreadful racket and Julienne hurried out with her lantern to find that the silly creature, having jumped the wall of its sty, had managed to impale itself on one of the hurdle posts she was sharpening to use to pen the lambing ewes in the spring.   

It looked to be a fatal wound; pig had nicked a vein or even an artery, and there was nothing the farmer’s wife could do.  She ran back to the house to fetch her long knife because the poor animal was squealing and suffering terribly, then it was the work of a moment for her to finish the thing off.  By the time it was over both pig and woman were soaked with the animal’s blood, for Julienne had not had time to fetch the kitchen basin or even her scalding-trough to catch it with.

She sat back on her haunches for a moment, heart hammering with the unwonted excitement and shivering a bit, wishing she’d thought to take her winter wrapper off.  Now the woollen garment – dark in colour, at least  - was wringing with blood and would have to be soaked or the stain would fix.  Breaking the ice on the rain-bucket, she dunked the shawl under before shutting up again and turning in for an early night.  The death of the pig meant a there would be a quantity of extra work for her tomorrow.

Next morning Julienne was up early, long before it was light.  She had spent the night dozing in front of her kitchen fire on the straight-backed wooden settle, having not bothered with a proper wash for once, or even to change out of her pig-sullied clothes beforehand.  There hadn’t seemed much point, as there promised to be a deal more grubbing about in the mud and blood to come.  Day dawned on one of the biting cold mornings, overcast but still with a hard, black frost that often came in this region at the end of winter.  As she stood on her doorstep, shivering in the stiff breeze that was blowing up the valley, Julienne wondered if her pig would have frozen solid in the night.  It hadn’t, but there were ice-crystals forming a gruesome variety of rime round the edges of the slick of blood in the mud by the pig-sty.  The unfortunate creature had bled out during its death-throes, at least.

Sighing, Julienne looked down at the sad, stiff-legged corpse.   This was quite the wrong time of year to be carrying out any kind of messy butchering work, and that went double for doing something like this out in the open.  The farmer’s wife was no stranger to manual labouring and she knew at first hand - knew from long experience -  exactly how much work went into preparing such a carcass.  But when she thought of the freezing mud and numb fingers and chilblains her heart sank, and for a moment she was almost tempted – but, really, there was far too much meat on the carcass for her to even begin consider wasting it.  Those special acorn-fed hams slowly curing in the lean-to beside her house formed Julienne’s main source of income, meagre enough as that invariably turned out to be in practice and - pending some sort of winter-starvation disaster, which (touch wood), had never come near to happening  for as long as she’d been living up here – were marked as strictly for market.  Longer-distance trading routes were opening up again all across Gondor now that the war had ended, and apparently, some of the rich folk over in the White City were wild about Julienne’s type of product and would pay handsomely – prices you wouldn’t believe! - for the thinnest-cut sliver of it.  This was according to one of the locals following his visit to the capital to see the new king crowned a year or so back; fellow hadn’t been able to wait to come home and crow to her about it.  But then grass-roots producers on Julienne’s scale were never likely to see much of the mark-up garnered by middle-man traders; meat-merchants and such.  The farmer’s wife was happy to be able to sell enough of her produce to maintain what level of independence remained to her and usually, that was enough to get by. 

Julienne’s spirits lifted a little, as it occurred to her that this was one of the days that Coppey Drew, a youth who sometimes helped with chores about the place, would surely visit.  And of course having a second person on hand would make dealing with the pig a far easier task.  Coppey was one of the many young grand-nieces and -nephews of her nearest neighbour and was currently lodging at his uncle’s farm across the valley.  As a Drew he was also technically a distant relative, though circumstances meant that Julienne, who - thank goodness! - was not a direct relation, would never have wanted to presume upon any family connection.  

 Generations of limited immigration into the area, together with the extended Drew clan’s tradition of cousins and cousins intermarrying had left its inhabitants with a particular ‘local look.’  This rendered many of those who bore it so like one another in appearance that at first it was often difficult for outsiders - among whom the farmer’s wife was still counted, despite her many years of residence -  to tell them all apart.  Actually this ‘look’ was, indirectly, one of the main influences that had shaped much of the course of Julienne’s life.  Many years before a particularly astute Drew grandmother had noticed that her family’s ongoing matrimonial traditions were taking a toll on the intellect - as well as the appearance - of the younger generations, and had taken steps to ensure a flow of fresh blood into the family.  Julienne was only one a number of women, often referred to by irreverent locals as ‘the brides from outside,’ who had been drafted in to supply it.  Her marriage, at the age of seventeen, to a member of the Drew clan had been arranged by her mother’s mother, a contemporary of the Drew matriarch’s in her youth, and at the time it had been considered a most admirable match.  It was to a much older man, of course, but he was a prosperous farmer with a handsome holding down in the fertile lowland.  This farmer was childless, having out-lived his first wife, and the naive young woman was assured of his eagerness to begin raising a family.          

Unfortunately for Julienne, her farmer was also in love with his cousin.

But, as Julienne reminded herself  (though even after all this time, her cheeks flamed with shame and humiliation whenever she thought about it) they were all friends these days and that was no more than water under the bridge, now!  Speaking of which: processing a pig required quantities of the stuff; far more than Julienne kept at hand for day to day use.  The little mountain stream from which she drew her supply was only a short walk from the house and she set off with buckets and yoke. To and fro, down the hill with buckets empty and back up again with them brimming; over a dozen times and more she went and by that time the water butt and scalding kettle were full, but there was no sign yet of Coppey Drew.       

Trusting that Coppey was only running late this morning and would arrive in due course, Julienne cast about for something useful to do.  The winter log-pile looked in good shape. There was more than enough fire wood, but Julienne was running short of smaller kindling, so she took her carrying-pack and marched over the fields and up into the hanger-wood.  This was a beautiful place in springtime, where wild hyacinths grew in such profusion between the young ash saplings and smooth-barked beeches that for a scant few weeks early every year the steeply rising hillside looked as if it was being hugged by a lovely, blue-and-purple mist.  

(It was all a bit bleak come mid-winter, mind you.)  

Julienne clambered over tangles of springy fallen branches all cloaked in light green moss, making for a fallen beech-tree that she knew of.  This type of tree had an unusually shallow root-system, just right for growing on sloping ground where there was not much soil, but the bigger specimens rarely fared well in very stormy weather.  The one Julienne had in mind had come down in the first of the autumn gales and the farthest twigs should have dried out enough by now.  

Further into the wood the farmer’s wife had to stop repeatedly, to shake off the prickling sensation that there was someone watching her (as later events transpired: actually, he was) - determined not to let local superstition get the better of her.

 One of the reasons Julienne lived where she did was due to long-standing tradition in the region which held that the valley-head where her farmhouse was sited was – well, not cursed, exactly, but its proximity to a piece of land that _was_ considered to be out-and-out blighted had made it difficult for the owners to find reliable tenants.  

Above the valley behind her house the ground rose higher and higher until the hillside merged into upland plateau, beyond which stood of a range of mountains.  And it was the lower foothills of this range that encompassed the steep-sided valley lived in by the farmer’s wife.

Gigantic, fell creatures (or so it was said) had haunted these mountains within living memory.  Whilst the level-headed Julienne wasn’t entirely convinced that such monsters had ever existed as she had never seen the slightest sign of one, she did know for a fact that another band, or group, or tribe of undesirables had recently taken up residence in the vicinity.  So perhaps it was true about the land being cursed after all, because the incomers were a gang of renegade Orcs, which obviously, as Julienne knew, did exist.  She had even seen one with her own eyes the previous winter: a great, grey, wreck of a creature someone had caught and thought it a good idea to chain to a post in the middle of the market for everyone to gawk at.  The fall of Mordor clearly had not – everyone’s hopes  to the contrary - been the end for that kind of individual and although nobody wanted to have such a villainous collection establishing themselves as even the remotest of neighbours, the onset of winter had discouraged any concerted action against them, and for the time being local consensus seemed to be to simply wait and see what would happen next.      

Arriving at the fallen tree, Julienne spent some time clambering through the snarl of its upper branches, snapping off and collecting likely-looking bits of small timber with her hands.  As she worked the sense of someone watching, from away in the trees, intensified until the feeling became too strong for her to shake.  She soon grew certain there was someone there, just at the edge of sight, but whoever it was didn’t answer her call, nor could she catch the slightest glimpse of them.   In spite of this she made herself continue until her pack was full, and then - tripping and slipping repeatedly, barking her shins badly on a jagged broken branch as she scrambled downhill, the farmer’s wife turned and hurried home.

As she neared the little farmstead she could see that all was quiet.  The low winter sun told her it was not long past midday, and Coppey Drew had still not come.   It was just under an hour’s walk to the farm where he was staying - and yet more time to get back.  Even if she set out to ask for him straight away, there would not be enough time to finish processing the pig in daylight.  

Julienne sat down on one of the rounded boulders that marked the corners of her vegetable plot,  rubbing the places where her legs, following her fall in the wood, were sore.  Then she screamed aloud in vexation!  She had not been brought up to be so ill-mannered as to openly display (or even admit to experiencing) such noisy emotions, but twenty years of biting her tongue and nothing but hard work and more work, all while doing her best to curry favour with a husband who was, at best, completely indifferent, had taken a toll on her good nature.  And after he’d had the temerity to actually try and move that love of his life, his cousin, together with her entire grown-up brood into the marital house - !   Suddenly the years of pointed remarks from family, of whispered conversations falling silent whenever she entered a room – not to mention the volumes of wicked, village gossip that year-in and year-out, for the sake of dignity and a quiet life, she’d tried her dutiful, wifely best to ignore!  At one stroke it all suddenly made sense.  And at that moment, Julienne – cast aside for another woman, but still nominally the farmer’s wife, right there in the middle of wondering how on earth she could have allowed herself to be – no, not just insipid, but so terribly, terribly dense, had decided that was going to be the end of it.  Whatever else an uncertain future might hold, Julienne resolved that there would be no further doing of duty, or maintenance of dignified silences for her, for the rest of her life.      

Living alone up here, where there was nobody’s business for Julienne to mind about, and more importantly, no-one to mind her own made that much easier, of course.  But there were also drawbacks: her nearest neighbours and the potential for their help at short notice being so far away, to start with.

After thoroughly cursing young Coppey loud and long, for a feckless slacker and a pop-eyed half-wit –  because the young man in question was afflicted to a greater than usual degree by the Drew clan’s ‘look’, Julienne pulled herself together as well as she was able and wearily set to work.  She knew it was unfair to blame poor Coppey, who was a good boy at heart, and so by way of mitigating her earlier outburst she racked her brains to try to think of something in his favour, such as....his beard!  Which, when the wispy collection of threads he was cultivating finally meshed together to a decent size, would certainly cover much of the weakness of his characteristically receding family chin.

In the meantime Julienne lit a fire and boiled water, but the rather dense hair on the pig, which  seemed to have grown itself a winter coat, had ‘set’ on the animal’s carcass as it cooled and could not be scalded loose in the usual way.  The farmer’s wife had expected – she’d feared, actually - that this would be the case.  The dead animal weighed substantially more than she did, and it took a great deal of effort for her to haul the body into a better location, onto the thin bed of hay she’d laid out for it.  When it was in position she placed more hay, mixed with some of the kindling twigs she’d collected earlier over and around the body and set fire to it.  The smell as the hair singed off was appalling and there were quantities of evil-looking smoke but it was a fast burn as she’d intended, and the flames died down quickly enough.  Covering her mouth and nose, she bent over and began scraping away the burned hair-residue together with the charred outer layer of skin, rolling the pig over halfway through.  It was an unpleasant, messy task.  

At last both sides of the pig were done and the farmer’s wife, now coated in greasy soot, was fitting it to a gambrel / pulley arrangement when a great clamour arose from one of the pair of large, rough-coated guardian-dogs she had on the premises.  These weren’t sheep dogs in the usual sense; rather they were watch dogs, for sheep.  In winter Julienne’s small flock was penned in a field not far from the farm, but for the rest of the year they grazed on the stretch of moor up on the hill behind her house, the evil reputation of which had made it impossible for her to employ a human shepherd.  Her dogs, accustomed to running free, tended to come and go as they pleased and returned home at this time of year mainly in bad weather, or to be fed.  This one had just come running up and was now barking continuously, his furious attention directed at a dense row of nut bushes that stood a stone’s throw away from where she was working, a short distance up the hill from the farmhouse. 

Immediately the sense of foreboding that had afflicted Julienne while she was collecting fire-wood returned.  She realized that although the small drama of her reaction to Coppey’s continued absence and the chore of hog-butchering had distracted her, since her experience in the wood that unnerving sensation had never left her, really.

The big dog kept bounding towards, then back from the line of little trees, barking and yelping excitedly and also – as Julienne noted with mounting unease  – with an unmistakeable note of apprehension in its voice.  And this from an animal quite capable of single-handedly defending its woolly charges from bears, or even a smaller pack of wolves!  She briefly considered, then discarded the idea of running for the house.  Anger and indignation at being frightened by some unknown person here on her own property were part of it; and something made her quite certain it was a person she was dealing with rather than some cold and famished animal, drawn down to her farm from out of the winter wilds.  But also there was the real worry that even if she were to turn and run, the distance was such that she might be overtaken before reaching safety.   

With one hand Julienne unloosened the gambrel-beam –a heavy length of seasoned timber – from the pig and held it out in front of her like a cudgel.  In the other she clasped her scraping tool.  This was actually a fish-slice from out the kitchen skillet – metal, but with only a short handle and it was dull at the edges too; not much of a weapon.  As she clutched it the farmer’s wife wished she’d kept hold of her pig-sticking knife.   

“If you’re that same silly beggar as was spying on me up in the wood,” she yelled across the farmyard, in a voice that wavered only a little bit, “you might’ve noticed I’ve better things to do than be stood here, arseing about the place with you!” 

(Living alone – as demonstrated by what she just said - had had its effect on Julienne’s sense of propriety, and by now she was accustomed to speaking out loud in the kind of language that hitherto fore she would have hesitated to use even in the privacy of her own head.)    

“ So,” she continued, “ why don’t you come out where I can see you, if you’re coming, but if you’re feared to, or not fit to be looked at, then – well then, I think you’d better just – just bloody buggering well piss off then, shouldn’t you!”   

“Call yer dog ter ‘eel and I’ll fink abaht it,” the person hidden in the tree-line shouted straight back. 

“I’m – I’m not without means of defence!” Julienne retorted, brandishing her gambrel.   But she signalled her dog to lie flat.

“So I can see.”  The stranger had a most peculiar pattern to his speech; he was not from around these parts and spoke in a flat-toned accent so unlike anything Julienne had ever heard that she couldn’t have begun to place it.  “I ain’t got nuffink like that on me,” the man added, as stooping out from under the low hazel branches, he held his empty hands palm outwards for Julienne to see.   

As the figure moved into the open Julienne saw that although he was man-shaped, actually this was far from being a man.  A terrible chill that had nothing to do with the cold of winter ran down her back and she shook with fear when she realized what manner of creature was approaching: for a moment the farmer’s wife was frozen with unthinking terror, because it was a black Orc from the mountains she was standing stock still and staring at, even as he came closer and closer.     

The Orc however, seemed wary too and he stopped somewhat short before coming in striking-range of Julienne’s gambrel-post.   “I never fort nice ladies knew of any of them filthy swear words,” he said. 

 

TBC.


	2. Orc and...pork

 

It was certainly incongruous, suicidally inappropriate, maybe, but more than anything at this point Julienne, accustomed - at least until quite recently - to receiving all the respect due a stately village matron and respectable farmer’s wife, found herself irritated by the stranger’s comment about her bad language.  The nerve of this dirty, miscreant creature!   Fear was replaced by something like a flood of indignation that ran straight down through her body starting at her scalp - she could feel it practically lifting her hair by the roots!   She gripped her pair of weapons more tightly.

“If you don’t want to go catching the rough edge of folkses’ tongues,” she advised, “best not to go lurking about in bushes frightening people then, isn’t it?”

“And,” she added, when there was no reply from the Orc, “as for being a nice lady, nice ladies don’t have to go wallowing about in pig-blood and all frozen shit on their own in dead of winter, do they?  So I expect that means you’re right then, aren’t you – _aren’t you_?   Yes, well done for noticing!  I can’t very well be one of those!”   

Julienne’s voice had been rising with anger and fear and indignation and panic all the way through this little outburst, and by the end was not far from being a hysterical screech.   The Orc, frowning  slightly, just stood and stared at her for a moment, as if in the face of something completely unexpected.   

“That pig-blood reeks,” he stated at last, puffing out a great breath that condensed like smoke in the cold all around him.  “Wind carries it right up the valley and over up top.  I was there when I smelled it and come down to ‘ave a look.”

Despite having been beside herself mere moments before, sudden curiosity got the better of Julienne.  “You’re one of them that’s living up there?”

“Yeah.  That’s right.”

Another pause.   “I saw when you ‘urt yourself,” the Orc said, “in the wood.  You ain’t ‘ad it seen to it as yet an’ I can smell that, too.  Ain’t you got a man about the place ter ‘elp?”

“Sometimes I’ve a farmhand,” Julienne replied tartly.  “Looks like he might’ve wanted a day off.”

Grinning wide, the Orc exposed an unnerving row of vicious-looking teeth.  Julienne shuddered to see that the creature’s incisors as well as his eye-teeth were all sharp and came to fang-like points.  As yet he was still only smiling, though.

“Might’ve ‘eard when you said what you fort about that,” he told her, “cos’ you didn’t half go on and on abaht it, didn’t’cher?”

Julienne supposed she must’ve cursed young Coppey well and truly enough at that.  “There’s not much needs doing usually, in winter on a piddling place like this,” she said.

Apparently having had enough of this irrelevant chit-chat, the Orc came directly to the point.  “Look,” he said.  “Why don’t I just give you an ‘and breaking that carcass into bits?” 

“Won’t be able to pay you,” Julienne told him quickly, because it was as much as she could do to afford the meagre wages that were young Coppey’s due.

“Yeah, you will,” the Orc replied, at once.  “Bit a’ meat, an’ some of the soft stuff’s alls I’m after.  ‘Specially the soft stuff, h’actually,” – he smacked his lips – “yer liver and lights.”

“This pig’s liver and lights, you mean?  It’s not....anyone else’s you’re after?” for some reason Julienne felt they had to be absolutely clear on this point.

“A’course!” the Orc said, giving her an arch sort look. “Who else d’you fink I’d be talking abaht, eh?”

It was a fair enough offer, the farmer’s wife thought – if the Orc could be trusted, and that, quite possibly, based on what she’d heard of these creatures, might well be assuming far too much.  Perhaps it was recklessness brought on the surge of adrenalin she’d experienced at the fright of first seeing him, or perhaps she was only thick-headed following her long, sleepless night.  In any case - “all right,” she conceded after a moment.  “But you’re not having any off the hindquarters.”  If the meat wasn’t tainted, she’d need to try and prepare those portions for market. 

“S’ a deal.”  The Orc, spat briefly into his hand and held it out briefly for Julienne to shake before thinking better of it, he wiped it off on his pants.

 “And you’ll have to wash your hands before we get started too,” Julienne added, with another shudder.

But it was difficult to detect any real difference after he’d done so: the creature’s hands and forearms seemed completely covered by some ingrained residue, or patina of dirt-worn-smooth that made his skin look almost black.  As he shook back the hood he’d been wearing against the chill of winter, the farmer’s wife saw that he must be like that all over, for the Orc’s face and even his near-naked scalp were that same colour too: a flat, dusty-looking reddish black, enlivened here and there only by scurfy-looking paler areas and the criss-crossing ridges and notches of old scars.     

“This start off black?  Before you set it on fire, I mean?” the Orc grinned again as she stood there staring at him, and indicated the pig.  “Must say, I do like the colour.”

“They’re a special breed,” Julienne said, quickly, looking away, embarrassed.  “I get them sent here special.  They’re from – far away.”

“Special, eh?  You don’t say.”  Having removed his outer coat, apparently the Orc now felt ready to begin.  “Now, what c’her want doing first?”

Julienne suggested perhaps he could help her move the carcass into the outhouse building, and that afterwards they could hoist and hang it from the ceiling together.

The pig was a hefty specimen of its type and of a large-growing strain.  And rigor mortis had long since set in, rendering its body completely stiff.   But, stooping down, the Orc simply heaved the awkward burden into his arms then straightened up, all in one easy movement.

“Me name’s Azof,” the creature said.

 “Azof,” Julienne repeated.  “I am Mistress.....I suppose you’d better just call me ‘Julienne.’ ”

The Orc acknowledged this with a deep-voiced grunt.  Shifting the pig in his arms, he quickly carried it the short distance to the shed, where he laid it down and fitted the gambrel Julienne handed him through the animal’s hocks.  Under his overcoat he was wearing only a sleeveless leather jerkin which he now removed, leaving the upper portion of his body bare.  He was barrel-chested and had unusually long, heavy arms, but, Julienne noted (biting her cheeks to stop herself from smiling) he was also obviously having to make quite an effort to suck in his gut.      

“Out the wind ‘ere, innit?” Azof explained, flexing and stretching his shoulders back a bit self-consciously.  He bent down to attend to the pig.

The Orc roped the gambrel to the pulley and with a single, effortless pull raised the carcass fully off the ground.  Holding it in place one-handed, he knelt to secure it so it was hanging in position, head-down.  The point was well-made: to be able to do that he must have been immensely strong.

As he worked the farmer’s wife who, up until now, had been making a conscious effort not to stare at him, found that she was could not help but watch Azof furtively as he went about his business.  Visitors of any kind were a novelty for Julienne, especially in winter - and she had never before enjoyed the services of a helper quite so out-of-the-ordinary as this one.  

The Orc was certainly bulky and well-built, but he had the look of a man who had recently gained a quantity of weight.  And his great breadth of body was deceptive, because actually he didn’t stand much taller than Julienne did, and she was a woman of only average height.  Azof’s almost-bald head sat on not much of a neck and he was noticeably thickset, especially across the shoulders.  These were so heavy and wide, especially in comparison to the lower part of his body (for his legs and hips were actually quite narrow and neat), that viewed from behind he seemed to have a distinctly out-of-proportion, top-heavy shape.  Note that this was only how he looked from the back: from the sides and the front the girth of Azof’s midriff, due to the belly that overhung slightly the top of his belt, tended to even any lack of proportion out.  The Orc’s broad face was fleshy across the cheekbones too, and he had a large, prominent nose, smallish, deep-set eyes and a definite tendency towards jowliness that matched the softness of his stomach and the slack-skinned lack of tone in what had obviously once been his significantly more muscular arms.  It was clear that the creature - as he had just demonstrated - was still possessed of great reserves of strength, but had recently fallen to seed.   

All of this Julienne noted by means of swift, sidelong glances as they set about dividing the pig.  Azof’s forte, predictably, lay largely in the requiring-of-brute-force aspects of this operation: he beheaded and then spilt the pig down the spine into two neat halves (lengthwise) using no other tool than the small hatchet from Julienne’s woodpile; that and his own native strength.   The farmer’s wife, least squeamish of women had to look away when he began to break the hog’s bones apart in his hands and even then the cracking, popping sounds of its rapid dismemberment were more than enough to set her teeth on edge.  The slightly more delicate tasks – the fine cutting and sorting into joints of the various pig-portions for example, fell naturally to Julienne, although the Orc took a fine interest in that too, and eagerly consumed almost his entire quarter of ‘the soft stuff’ there on the spot. 

As Azof gulped down slurping double-handfuls of raw liver and pig-innards and congealed blood clots, Julienne eyed him sidelong, a little sickened by the unsavoury spectacle.  But, she reconsidered, perhaps in real terms it was not so different from the sight of her husband gloomily sucking stew through the great massive brush of his weak-chin-concealing beard; both men were careless, messy eaters but at least the Orc was taking his meal with obvious enjoyment.  And, unlike her husband, Azof seemed straightforward enough and even rather easy-to-please  - which certainly made refreshing change from Julienne’s point of view, if nothing else. 

Soon enough the Orc had filled himself to capacity: quite a feat given how much he had eaten over such a short space time.

“Right then,” he said, wiping his hands on his blood-sticky trousers and easily hefting  the rib and fore-section of pork they’d agreed upon over one shoulder, “I best be off.”  Without another word, he set off into the gathering dusk. 

Sighing as she watched him cross the fields, climbing towards the hill, the farmer’s wife turned back to work.  Something had told her – quite correctly - that Azof would be unlikely to stay for the post-butchering clean-up; yet another messy, tedious task that still lay ahead.

The stomach and yards of intestine could wait, but all the meat that she and the Orc had jointed had to be rinsed then hung up to dry - to say nothing of the scrubbing, scouring and cleaning of the various knives, chopping boards and basins she’d used earlier in the day, and when at last she was finished Julienne was exhausted.  It had already been dark for hours, and was long past the time she usually retired for the night.  But while her pig, butchering utensils  – and even the floor in the lean-to were all now tidy and neat, the farmer’s wife herself was still caked in dried blood and grime.  Not able to entertain either the thought of another night spent on the hard settle, or of going to bed in that filthy state, she resolved to wash her face, hands and arms at least. 

She soon found the muck had dried onto her.  It took some effort, scrubbing with cold water and wash-cloth, to remove even the surface layer and the effort irritated the long scrapes from her fall in the forest, making them sting.  The events that came after; Azof’s arrival, the work and the pig, had put these injuries to the back of Julienne’s mind, but now the minor cuts on her forearms, and more painfully, the larger areas where she’d skinned her shins began to throb.

Lifting her skirts she took a peek at the damage; it didn’t look good.  There seemed to have been an awful lot of blood, considering that the cuts though quite extensive, were not especially deep, and the fronts of her stockings were shredded all the way from her knees to the tops of her ankle-boots.   Worse, the fluid seeping from the shallow wounds had soaked into the wool and dried there, so that much of the remaining surface of the ruined stockings was now more or less stuck in place on her legs. 

She was still bending down, unlacing her shoes when she heard a familiar voice saying  -

“You look black as an Orc yourself, now.   All that pig-grease, an’ soot.”

Julienne jumped at the unexpected sound.  Azof was leaning just inside the half-open doorway, watching her intently.

“Let’s ‘ave a look.”  Closely inspecting her injuries, Azof sucked on his teeth briefly, then said: “I could give you an ‘and wiv that an’ all, I bet.  Bet I could sort that right out in a minute.”

He bent lower, and with surprising dexterity hooked a claw through one of the holes in Julienne’s stocking and began trying to work it free from her skin. 

“Nah,” he concluded after a moment, “this’s all dried on you here, right?  Be murder f’you just try an’ pull it off.   You’re in luck though.  If I keep at it for a bit, should be able ter lick it free.”

“What?”  The farmer’s wife exclaimed, not quite able to believe her ears.   “I don’t think I’m going to be having any of that, thank you!  I’ll just try and wet it –“

“Water!”  The Orc grimaced.  “That ain’t no good!  Spit’s the best thing for this,” he assured her, nodding seriously.  “We don’t ‘ave – didn’t ‘ave, no – ‘ealers, nor medics nor nuffink where I come from.  An’ you know, Orc spit’s got – stuff in it.  Special stuff what ‘elps wiv’ the pain an’ the ‘ealing, doesn’it?”

“Does it?” Julienne replied, nonplussed.   “But I’m no Orc!  What makes you think that’ll work on me?”

“Don’t see why it wouldn’t,” Azof growled.  “Folk like you an’ me, we’re maybe not so different as some as like to make out.”  He stared at Julienne for a moment, unaccountably offended by her reaction.  “After all, I ‘elped you – proper ‘elped you before, didn’t I?  An’ you weren’t so sure about that to begin with neither.”

Julienne had to allow that yes, he had been of great help to her, and people willing to lend her assistance these days were precious few.  “I suppose maybe it mightn’t hurt for you to try,” she said.

“Park yer bum on that, then,” the Orc said quickly, indicating her butcher-block.   “Bit comfier, eh?  Gonner ‘ave ter lift yer skirts bit higher, too.”

Despite her misgivings, the farmer’s wife clambered up onto the block and, as she exposed a little more of the injured area, did her best not to think about lambs going quietly to slaughter.   With a smooth, double-handed movement the Orc slid her skirt and underskirts back well past her knees, spreading her legs wider apart as he went.  And did it seem he lingered there, hard, calloused fingers digging a clutch into the soft flesh high on the insides of her thighs for just a little longer than necessary?  Next moment however Julienne was looking away as Azof moved his head down to the wounds on her shins and began licking them, working the torn and bloody skin through her stockings with his lips and his tongue.  There was a little pain and some slight stinging as the cloth started to lift free, but these were outweighed by far stronger, and much less aversive sensations of soft heat and wetness from the Orc’s mouth.  

When the blood-stiffened wool was soaked with spittle he’d gather a mouthful and suck the moisture out.  This was repulsive and yet – not.   Azof’s hands were on her knees, and the sight of his bald, bent head nodding up and down, up and down against the whiteness of her legs should have been obscene; any decent woman would have thought so.  Instead it began to call up old, half-forgotten feelings of Julienne’s that belonged to the days before disillusionment and betrayal, not to say the many years of hard work, squashed all such nonsense out of her.  In spite of her weariness, she began to experience a sensation of – not warmth, exactly; but there began to steal over her the beginnings of an ever-so-slight, heightened awareness of the hidden portions of her body; a very faint, spreading feeling of pleasure that seemed to run through her and through, centred upon that secret place between her legs –

Coincidence, or not, but right at that moment the Orc stopped short, caught his breath and let out a soft but unmistakeable groan of pleasure.         

Immediately wrenching herself away from him, Julienne brought her legs together with a slap.  “Are you enjoying this?”

“Yeah,” Azof said indistinctly, because his mouth was still dripping with his spit and her blood.  “Why d’you fink I offered in the first place?  ‘Cos you taste luverly.  Loads better’n that pig.”  A pause, and he added – “don’t bovver you, does it?”

“I should think that’ll do!” Julienne snapped, mortified.  All of a fluster she jumped to her feet, trying to rearrange her clothing as she went.

“But I ain’t finished –“

“Thank you!”  The farmer’s wife grabbed the Orc and  propelled him towards the door.

Azof seemed to accept this sudden expulsion, but he paused on the threshold and turned back.  “Maybe if you’re lucky one of these nights I’ll come see you again,” he said, and winked.

TBC.

 


	3. Peeping tom-foolery

 

In spite of what Azof had said, Julienne was not expecting a return visit.  There was no real reason for him to come back – no further free meals for example, to be had from her and she could see little else of value on her holding that he might wish to take.

She thought about the Orc sometimes, however.  The weather closed in again shortly afterwards, with a week or more of icy rain, sleet and fog and actually, through those lonely days at the end of winter, he was often in her thoughts.  The novelty of their encounter was part of it.  Added to this was the remoteness of Julienne’s situation: before the breakdown of her marriage, she’d been surrounded by many - if not particularly close friends, at least local acquaintances, with whom she had been on good speaking terms.  Now, isolated in her cottage high up the valley, the farmer’s wife was sorely in want of companionship – company in whatever form it took seemingly; that was another consideration too.   

And then there was the aspect that she didn’t care to acknowledge even to herself – because what sort of woman could think of entertaining such notions towards that kind of creature?  Before and even during the earlier days of her marriage Julienne had been a normal, happy woman with a full complement of healthy woman’s appetites and at the time had looked upon the act of sex as something to be anticipated; actively enjoyed, even.  For a long time, even the uniformly disappointing nature of conjugal relations as shared with her husband had not dampened her optimism, although ultimately, their sad association had worn Julienne out.       

Azof was far, he was very, very far from being the kind of person the farmer’s wife might have found herself dreaming about in her youth.  But, he’d come when he was needed and had shown some interest in her (a bit pathetic, admittedly, but it was true), and over and above all this (and perhaps most saliently), he was one of the few males she’d seen in a long while who was not a direct relation, in his dotage, or of the family Drew.  And, as she reasoned it to herself, wasn’t it nice for her to have – just this once - an actual person upon whom she could hang one idle little mid-life fantasy?  What possible harm could there be in that?

The difficulty here being the possible effect this could have on the situation if the Orc was ever to pay her a return visit.  And Azof did come back, of course. 

At last the last storms of winter had blown themselves out.  A thaw set in and the temperature rose well above freezing, and for the first time in days Julienne was able to venture from area immediately around her house.  She spent all morning until late afternoon tending to her flock.  The sheep were a small, dark-fleeced variety and though the breed was hardy in the extreme, a number were running lame and it took time for her to catch them, then trim their hooves and treat their feet.     

A day spent out in the open, with exercise and fresh air had invigorated her and she sat down to her evening meal with a hearty appetite, for once.  When she was finished it was still early yet, and after casting around for something useful to do, she set about washing her hair. 

Julienne’s notions regarding personal hygiene had caused no end of comment when she first moved into the area.  The southern province of Gondor she’d come from was a markedly more sunny clime, and – in contrast to the valley-dwellers hereabouts - she had been in the habit of taking a bath every day.  The practicalities of whole-body bathing in a colder region with no indoor plumbing had eventually put a stop to this, but still she tried to keep herself clean wherever possible; her hair in wintertime being an exception, for she found washing her hair in such chilly surroundings to be something of trial, at least.      

 The lean-to beside the farm house had been built against the wall that held the kitchen fireplace, placed so it shared some of its warmth and one of the old kitchen windows, flanking the chimneybreast, even provided convenient access to the lean-to during bad weather.  Inside the little cottage space was at a premium – Julienne’s odds and ends of furniture, salvage from the wreckage of her married life had more or less filled it, and the out-building was a useful space for bathing, and also served as an all-round utility room.  

Her hair was washed, the long coil wrapped and resting in its drying-cloth on top of her head.  The farmer’s wife was bending over the basin, enjoying the fragrance of the herb-scented water when she thought she saw – from the corner of her eye  - a dark face framed against the low window, very close by.  Hand at her throat she turned see the Orc Azof, hunkered down by the grimy outhouse windowpane and not leering at her exactly, but watching her intently with a peculiarly intense, hungry look in his eye.  He seemed to be breathing very heavily – what did he think he was doing out there, in fact?  - and she could see each breath condense then fade against the glass as it huffed out of his half-open mouth.  As they stood, staring at one other, Azof made no movement whatsoever; didn’t speak, or make any attempt to come in: he wasn’t disturbing her, exactly, and so at last Julienne turned away and went on with drying her hair.  Azof watched her combing through the fine, light brown tresses for a while but when she looked to the window again, he was gone.  

A cold spring rain blew in next morning and continued all day and through the night.  Julienne’s strange visitor did not put in another appearance, and she guessed that Azof was lying up somewhere, or more likely had returned to whatever mountain hideaway he was living in. 

The evening after that however, she found him waiting by the kitchen window soon after it grew dark.  Julienne’s heart jumped with the shock of seeing him - and also undeniably, a queer kind of delight.  He stayed watching at the window as she went about her household tasks, grinning easily from time to time whenever she looked up at him, until she turned in for another early night. 

It was difficult to understand what was going on.  Night after night the Orc would pay her one of his nocturnal visits, sometimes only looking in for a few minutes, but more often watching her and waiting, through the dark.  He didn’t come always at the same time, or each and every evening but Julienne soon realized that if she left a lamp burning near the window, at some point he would be more than likely to appear.  For some reason he always made sure to stay until Julienne registered that he was close by; he was extremely reliable, at least in that respect.   But he never tried to enter the house or said another word, and on one occasion when Julienne ventured out to talk to him, Azof quickly hot-footed it away into the night. 

This bizarrely reticent behaviour was quite against the natural order, given what Julienne had always heard of Orcs, and it made the farmer’s wife wonder what he could be getting out of these visits; why on earth he kept coming back.

There were clues, obvious clues available to her, however.

Julienne had neither the spare time nor the type of temperament that would allow her to sit pining for a visitor who might or might not ever arrive and she had resolved, not long after the first of the Orc’s visits, to go about her usual business irrespective of whether he seemed likely to put in an appearance. 

One night, Azof surprised her when she was at her bath.  The shutters stood open and he was able to look through the window of the outhouse and see – everything.  His look of astonishment was soon replaced by the filthiest of leers and at the sight of it Julienne quickly suppressed her first impulse which naturally, was to cover her nakedness.

After all, this was her house (or it was, on a long-term lease) and moreover who was Azof, of all people, to dictate what she should be doing on her own property!

Julienne had had children – they were grown-up children, now, but she’d had them when she was very young and she was still, in many ways, in her prime.  Her bosom was firm with breasts – fairly - upstanding and her stomach was nearly as flat as it had been when she was a girl.  Her round bottom – well, there a concession to approaching middle age had been made admittedly, but it was still fine and shapely, as were her arms and legs, which were smooth and unblemished.   As for her face, of course Azof had had ample opportunity to see that before, but her features were attractive and regular, the pale skin soft, and as yet unlined.   She had eyes that were wide and bright, with pleasantly long lashes, and as an added bonus - in contrast to many of the locals in this district - (secretly, Julienne was especially proud of this), had managed to keep her own teeth.  And all of them in excellent condition, too.

She knew she was a good-looking woman and the warm lamp-light was flattering to her.  And it was exciting, for once, to have someone so obviously paying attention, appreciating her.  It wasn’t that Julienne hadn’t received propositions, offers of a very specific type, after her separation.  Without the protection provided by a man - and marriage, and respectability - she’d soon realized she was regarded by certain predatory persons of her and her former husband’s acquaintance as no more than fair game: these fellows’ seemingly kind offers of help and to ‘set her up somewhere’ being contingent only upon her future willingness to lie quietly on her back for them and open her legs.  At the time it would have been an easy trap to fall into.  In those days Julienne had been able only to acknowledge feelings of shame and mortification.  She hadn’t yet found the knack of expressing her anger, her - under the circumstances, completely justifiable - rage outright.  But even then something in her, a deep-seated point of principle that until the moment she wasn’t aware she’d possessed had rebelled at the suggestion; the idea that for the sake of nothing more than another quick-fix solution she should allow herself, at some man’s behest, to be put upon and so easily led.

With one of those men, in another situation, it would have been unthinkable.  But perhaps if it was to be on her own terms; this once.  What might that be like?  She considered her position only briefly and then lifting her chin, made sure to look Azof straight in the eye.  Loosening the drying sheet she’d grabbed for on first catching sight of him she exposed a small portion of her body and let the Orc see a narrow strip running from under her left breast, down her belly and to her upper thigh.  For a minute or two she let him look as much as he wanted; feeling increasingly foolish, allowed the sheet to slip further and even changed position for him, so that he would be better able to appreciate the rise and fall of her breasts as she stretched her arms above her head, or the change in the curve of her buttocks that came when she shifted her leg.    

Azof’s reaction couldn’t have been more satisfying, and Julienne was flattered by it, the seedier aspects of their interaction notwithstanding.  By now the Orc was squashed against the glass, one hunched shoulder and the side of his face flattened by the close contact.  Yes, there would be.... smears to be cleaned off in the morning.   And he appeared to be pressing  – certain of his bodily portions against it, for there came, loud and distinct in the silence of the outhouse, a regular scrape and rustle as he strained against the windowpane.  The Orc’s lips were wet and his mouth hung open, he was sweating, and when he glanced up at Julienne he looked absolutely desperate – through the glass she could hear him groaning softly, as if in pain.  It was a thoroughly unsavoury spectacle; the farmer’s wife found the idea of him at her window, carrying on – in that manner - to be faintly revolting.  But at the same time it was definitely arousing, also; the look of longing in Azof’s eye!  The creature outside yearning for her was, however, nothing more than a disgusting Orc and with that realization, Julienne’s nerve broke.  Holding her wrap tight around, she turned and made an undignified scramble through the connecting window from outhouse to kitchen - although the stooping pose she had to adopt in clambering over the low sill unfortunately revealed quite a bit more than she’d intended.  Hurrying along the outside wall of the cottage Azof followed her, leaping hopefully from window to window until the farmer’s wife finally had the presence of mind to pull the curtains closed.  And yet still he made no attempt to come in, and by this stage Julienne was quite beyond being able to say whether or not she would have wanted him.

The Orc was back again the next night, and arrived earlier than usual, too.  In anticipation of this the farmer’s wife had already barred her shutters; a flimsy barrier, although in Azof’s case for some reason effective enough, seemingly.  Azof, however, was persistent: he did not leave and for some time afterwards  Julienne could hear his footsteps crunching gravel as he stamped up and down the stony path outside her house.

Indoors, Julienne was torn with indecision; found she couldn’t sit still.  Truthfully, she wanted to see Azof, so what was point of all of this?  Before she’d properly made up her mind she found she was flinging the drapes open and unlatching the wooden shutter.

Out of the dark the Orc came hurrying up.  He stepped smartly into his usual position by the window, waiting on the threshold immediately outside.     

 Rather than carrying on with her evening routine with Azof watching as she would before, this time the farmer’s wife stood and faced him, and, after a moment’s hesitation, unfastened the topmost button of her blouse.  Then she waited.  The Orc caught on quickly and immediately began to follow suit, hurriedly tearing aside the outer layer of his clothing.

It was a little one-sided, this game they were engaging in – if it was a game.  Julienne would go about her business in her cottage as before but as the nights went on, in increasing stages of undress, while Azof would merely stand, watching her intently at the window, more often than not stark naked and completely shameless in this respect.  As she’d seen for herself previously, he had the shape of a man – a rough, stocky, muscular man, more or less – and as Julienne noted with something other than entirely academic interest - the Orc did appear to carry a full complement of manly body-parts dangling down between his legs.  Other than that, however, any detail was fuzzy in the extreme.  Due to the darkness outside and degree of reflection in the thick panes of glass, it was frustratingly difficult for Julienne to get a proper look at him.

These peculiarly stilted liaisons continued for a few days short of a week. 

Then, on a grey evening, a little after sunset, Azof came rapping at her window.  This was unusual, for in the past - when not setting out deliberately to make noise - he would come and go quiet as a shadow, out in the dark.  He’d been running; as the farmer’s wife answered his frantic, beckoned summons, she could see the Orc’s barrel chest heaving and hear him breathing noisily through his nose.  He mimed opening the window and as Julienne reached to unlatch it was just on the point of speaking - when he looked sharply over his shoulder, attention fixed on something out in the dark behind him.  Turning back to her, he shook his head and began to walk away.

Julienne grabbed her lantern and ran to the doorway; then in her haste had some difficulty unfastening the many bolts and locks with which she’d barred it (out of longstanding habit mostly; with perhaps a miniscule shred of prudence mixed in).  She rushed outside, determined to get to the bottom of this.  There were low clouds and a lowering sky but it was not fully dark yet, and hurrying over the fields in the distance she thought she could make out the darker figure of Azof, moving swiftly along the hillside, away from the house.  The Orc was stocky and somewhat bandy-legged, shaped for neither speed nor grace.  But for such a person to have gotten that far in this space of time he must have run flat-out, like a rabbit!  

“Azof!” Juliene shouted.  “Azof!”

By now he was almost out of sight.  Discarding any thoughts of caution and, in stark defiance of yet another life-long trait, all good sense, the farmer’s wife paused only to snag a warmer wrapper from its hook, and leaving her door standing wide, set off in hot pursuit.

 

TBC.


	4. Into the woods

 

Breathing hard, Julienne chased after the runaway Orc.  The route Azof had taken followed the contours of the hillside, and even though the distance from her house increased, Julienne found that she was neither gaining nor losing much height.  It was difficult going in near-darkness however, for the path was narrow and was little more than a sheep-track.  The ground sloped steeply away to her left, promising a painful fall into thin air if she lost her footing, and there were many great, flat-topped boulders on the grassy down-slope, caught and hanging in mid-roll on their descent from higher up.  The placement of these slabs was unstable at best, and each one had to be negotiated with extra care.  Here and there between rock-patches were wet flushes on the hillside, the spring-line being high, as usual, following the winter rains, and the spiny rushes and bright green float-grass that were so useful to travellers, indicating by their presence the position and extent of these boggy areas were of no use to Julienne, for by this stage of the evening visibility was poor and all colours had faded.  The farmer’s wife got her feet wet splashing through every soggy area and in one particularly deep patch, became mired almost knee-deep.   It occurred to Julienne that to set off cross-country like this, Azof must be possessed of a near-uncanny ability to find his way in the dark.

After toiling along for a miserable time the farmer’s wife found herself in more familiar territory, as the little path she’d been following dropped down through the trees at the edge of a wood.  Here it joined a broader, well-used trail that ran down the arm of the valley opposite her house.   This way would lead, eventually, to her nearest neighbour’s farm.

Julienne stood for a moment, not sure which direction to take.  She realized as she waited that she was not alone in the wood, for there were five or six people, some with dogs, coming towards her up the track.  The farmer’s wife’s social circle in these parts was so limited that even from a distance she could tell that all but one of them, him being her nearest neighbour, had come in from outside of the immediate area.  Neighbour Drew did not seem happy to see her.

“If it isn’t Mistress Drew!” one of the walkers called, greeting her.  Actually ‘Mistress Drew’ was, her husband’s well-known indiscretion aside, Julienne’s official title still.  But for all the formality of the man’s address there was open insolence in his voice, too.  

“Cousin Drew,” Julienne replied, stiffly.  He was yet another distant relation (of course), though the family ties that bound this one to her former husband and by proxy, to Julienne herself were more convoluted than usual, involving, she recollected, relatives who had set up with second - or even third - new families in their later lives.  This particular cousin had been grafted onto the more familiar branches of the Drew family tree as a step-son, in his teens.  And he had also been one of the ones who’d made her a special – and in his case, especially insulting - kind of offer, shortly after the news of her husband’s abscondment became widely known.  

The way this fellow had propositioned her, back in the day, had been so notable for its offensiveness that Julienne had responded with what had been for that time in her life an uncharacteristically strong-worded and vociferous public knock-back, something she’d put out of mind completely until this moment, when she found herself unexpectedly face-to-face with him again, in the dark of a wood.  He was a grown man with a wife of his own, now, somewhere but with his non-stop insults and innuendoes, behaved more like a tiresome adolescent - and got away with it for the most part, by claiming he had ever only spoken in jest.  Well-known among his peers as an all-round good sort, Julienne remembered the man more for being a tricky character, sly and vicious with it.  As he drew nearer, the farmer’s wife reached up to pull her shawl more tightly around her throat.

“Didn’t think I’d find you walking out so late, Julienne,” the man said, bounding ahead of the others to meet her.  “My luck must be on the mend.  What a _happy coincidence_!”   Skidding to a halt, he leaned in to plant a theatrically chaste kiss on Julienne’s cheek, remaining so uncomfortably close afterwards they were pressed practically hip-to-hip.  As she tried to pull away, Julienne could feel the cousin’s breath, warm on her cheek.  It smelled sour and had the tang of stale spirits on it. 

“What you looking so worried about!” he said, snaking one arm round Julienne’s waist.  “Got secrets to keep?  Or maybe you’ve been sneaking out to meet some fancy man.  Oh-ho, I’ll bet!  So where’ve you hidden him?  Stashed away in your skirts?”  

He pretended to make a drunken joke of searching under Julienne’s petticoat, but in reality it was more of a calculated attempt to have a good feel of her backside. 

“My offer to you still stands, good cousin,” he said in a low, drawling voice, as Julienne batted his hands away, seething inwardly.  “And we won’t even talk about how nasty you was to me last time, when all I wanted was to do you a favour or two.  Like I said, whenever the mood’s upon you and you feel in need of sorting out, you just send word.  I’ll drop whatever I’m doing for the privilege of being first of all the ones who think what you want best’s a good, hard, seeing-to.” 

Julienne swore at him softly, and was already backing sharply away to put some distance between them as the rest of his party approached.  All were members of, or otherwise connected to the extended Drew family, most of them farmers - or in the cousin’s case, associates of farming folk; he was a livestock dealer by trade. 

 “Just on my way back from checking the animals,” lied Julienne in a loud voice.  There was nothing of the kind, up in those woods.  

“And we’re going lamping.  Rabbits,” one of the farmers said quickly, holding up the lantern he was carrying.  “Down that big warren.”  This was an equally obvious lie.  A few of them were hanging back loitering in the dark, but they didn’t have their dogs with them, and it was clear that no-one was carrying much more than a small torch or a stout walking stick.  Apart from her neighbour the elderly farmer Drew, they were all rather young men - and yet for some reason each one had with him unusually heavy walking stick or a staff, amounting to a cudgel, almost. 

“It would’ve been better if we’d asked, first,” the farmer went on haltingly, “but, Drew ‘ere,” – the man indicated Old Drew, her neighbour –“said it was after hours.”  The fellow was obviously discomfited, and that struck the farmer’s wife as odd.  Although the rabbit colony they aiming for did lie on the lower boundary of her holding, the access was by common land and there was no real need for them obtain Julienne’s permission. “We’d of asked but Old Drew,” the farmer went on, “reckoned it was far too late to go round calling at a – a –“

“A house where who knows what kind of all funny stuff goes on?”  distant-cousin Drew put in, with a nasty sort of smile.  “Come this time of night, I don’t like to think what sort of visitors we might stumble upon our good cousin entertaining!”

“an ‘ouse where a single lady, a respectable, single lady, was living on her own, was what _I_ was going to say!” the farmer blustered.  Speaking directly to Julienne he added -“old Drew said you’d sure be all right about it.” 

Julienne replied, as blandly as she could, that it was fine.

“’Course she don’t mind.   Our worthy cousin, Mistress Drew, likes things nice and wouldn’t want her new place overrun with vermin.  But a little bird tells me there’s vermin, and then there’s vermin.  Depends on how folk might want to look at it.  Now, what d’you have to say about that, eh, Julie?”

Old Drew stepped up then and elbowed their distant cousin hard in the ribs.  “Best be getting on!” he said. 

“I expect that means you’re all meeting down the big bury,” Julienne replied, and with effort, was able to keep her tone light.  She wanted to be free of them, her husband’s cousin especially, and whatever they were really up to it was certainly none of her business.  “Good luck with your hunting!” she called as the men, each of them nodding to her in passing, trooped off. 

Old Drew tarried behind the others for a minute.  “Could be there’s queer folk abroad this night Julienne,” he told her, giving her a shrewd look.  “Now, you know you’re always welcome round our place - the missus is there and Coppey with her.  She’ll be glad to have you sit down for a bit of supper and you can tell her I said you should stop over.  We don’t like to think of you, none of us do, living on your own up there and I’d be happier knowing tonight, of all nights, you were somewhere safe.   But,” he sighed, “I know what you’re like and I don’t think you’ll do it.  So take a bit of care with your good self, eh?  And when you get home, best bar your windows, all right?”  On that worrying note, he bid her good night.

By the time the hunting party departed it was too dark for Julienne to go any further, and the Orc was nowhere to be found.   Julienne didn’t see him again in the days that followed.  This gave her enough time to begin to – not regret, exactly, but to develop certain misgivings about her recent behaviour.  She did her best not to brood over it: even if Azof was not, technically, a man he had certainly behaved as exasperatingly as Julienne had come to expect from those of his gender, and if her association with such a person would have led to widespread censure, well then – and putting her cousin’s worryingly prescient comments aside -  it could only ever be a good thing that no-one else would ever come to know about it. 

Strangely enough, it was not the ruder aspects of their almost-liaison that were most mortifying to her, but how quickly and easily the Orc had managed to insinuate himself into her routine.  Stung by her husband’s betrayal and the humiliating experiences that had come after it, Julienne had worked hard to set herself up again in a situation of total self-sufficiency - or so she’d believed.  Recent events, however, were beginning to challenge that.    

Meanwhile, life trudged on as normal.  Every year Julienne sent an order for fresh livestock to a contact from her girlhood home, carefully timing the message so that the young animals would arrive at the best time; after the worst of the weather was past but when it was still early spring.   Rather than sending her instructions from the nearest village, she preferred to make a longer journey to a slightly larger settlement further to the south.  It was not much more than an excuse to see a different set of faces, really, but the range of foothills she lived in ran roughly north-east to south-west and given the lie of the land, by crossing down to the next-but-one valley, she was also able to give her letter a good head-start.

If she set out early, the journey could be completed as a full day’s walk, there and back.  Having deposited her message at an inn known as a regular stopping place for travellers making their way south, Julienne had run a few other errands and was on her way back home.  It was a bright, sunshiny day – excellent for walking - and she’d made excellent progress.  Now in the late afternoon she lingered, admiring the panorama of greeny brown, forest-blanketed foothills laid out before her, with distances made gauzy by a lilac-coloured sea-haze that hung on the horizon, far away to the west.   She had turned back to her path and was heading towards the tree-line higher up the hill, when she glimpsed ahead of her another person, the first she’d seen on either outward or return leg of her walk.  A moment’s watching showed that the wayfarer was approaching, coming down from the other side of the mountains, marching towards her with a familiar swaggering, slightly rolling walk.  Julienne recognized the Orc Azof immediately.

After a moment, when he was still some way off, Azof caught sight of her too.  He stopped, watched her waving enthusiastically to him, and then – incredibly - turned in his tracks and began hurrying as fast as his bow-legs could carry him, back up the hill towards the edge of the wood. 

Julienne stood with her mouth gaping open in amazement.  Could there have been some possible mistake?  It was infuriating - she wouldn’t stand for this!   Perhaps - perhaps it would be better to ignore the Orc - pretend she hadn’t seen him after all, and save face.  Or should she hang back and wait until he was well on his way?  But, she was – oh!  She was so happy to see him!

“Azof,” Julienne called, voice cracking, and before she knew what she was doing was hurrying after him up the track. “Azof!”

The Orc came to a stop, very reluctantly, under the trees ahead of her on the slope.  He half-turned, glowering over his shoulder as she drew level with him.

With a few quick skipping steps Julienne pushed past on the stony path.  Speech, for the present, was beyond her – she had to try to catch her breath for it had been another punishing chase after him, up the hill.  Azof just stood there, shoulders hunched and glaring at the ground, working his hands in and out of fists.  

“Azof!”  The farmer’s wife reached for him.  “What happened that night  - why did you stop coming?  I was worried - wondering where you’d gone!”

The Orc pressed his lips tight shut.   Actually he looked a little the worse for wear; as if at some point in the week gone past he had been in a fight.  Julienne could see the prominent biting muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching and let her hand drop down to her side again.  Azof would not look her directly, and seemed at a loss as to what he should do.

 “Azof!  I’ve missed you!”

“’Ave you?” he grunted.  “Yeah?”

Julienne took his hand.  “Yes!”

He picked her up bodily then, held her against him with one arm clasping her waist.  “Yeah?” he repeated, and Julienne clung to him.  Her arms went around the Orc’s neck, and she wrapped her legs around his hips.  Weaving sideways under their combined weight, Azof staggered a few steps down the steeply sloping path.  Stopping at the foot of an ash tree, braced her up against it.  

Fighting his way through layers and layers of skirt and underskirt, Azof managed to fumble his hands down to her bare skin at last.  He pushed one muscular thigh into the cleft of her body and as she closed her legs around him, grabbed for and began kneading her buttocks.  The Orc gave a low rumble of satisfaction; brought one hand up the inside of her shirt and squeezed roughly at her breasts, then slipped it down the front of her body and worked it between her legs.  Julienne gasped as two thick fingers shoved themselves into her; the Orc groaned shortly in reply as his hand met the warm wetness there, and he thrust his fingers in and out in quick stabbing movements, moving them with frantic enthusiasm.  The farmer’s wife went along with him, showing the Orc how to move and where and with how much pressure to stroke, and after a time of squeezing and chafing herself onto his hand – in no time at all – she was shuddering out a short climax, her face hidden against the creature’s chest.

Azof had been watching her closely all the way through their encounter and the expression on his face afterwards was still something feral, with fierce slitted eyes and a half-open mouth.  He worked his throat as if to say something to her as they moved apart, and tried again after, but no words would come.  And the next moment the Orc had turned and was striding away, his bulky form quickly vanishing behind the screen of young trees.

Julienne stared after Azof for some time after this abrupt departure, feeling hurt, and puzzled and indignant.  The cut-short conclusion to their encounter sharply recalled to her certain experiences  from the earliest period of her married life, when - afterwards, considering his marital duties complete, her husband would simply roll away from her in bed and leave.  But Azof had seemed so eager to begin with!  It made no sense, though the end result was similar: Julienne’s over-riding sense of disappointment was just the same as it had been with her husband.  She sank down against the tree, pushing the heels of her hands into her eye-sockets and pressed down on them miserably.

“Sod him, then,” Julienne said, out loud.  Her voice was wavering dangerously, but she tried to inject a bit of ire and venom into it; a brave attempt, if not wholly successful.  “If he’s going to be like that – then bloody well sod him.”  She repeated something along those lines several times, but her heart wasn’t in it.  She sat there at the base of the tree for a long time, till the first of the stars were out.  It was past midnight by the time she made her weary way home.

 

TBC


	5. Blackthorn winter

 

Given what had happened between them it was unexpected, then, when two nights later there came a loud knocking at Julienne’s front door.  Of course the farmer’s wife knew there was only person it could possibly be.

“Go away, Azof,” she shouted, from her seat by the fire.

The Orc began hammering much harder, rattling the door on its hinges and causing the rough boards to bow inwards alarmingly.  A rain of sawdust, ingrained in the woodwork since the day of the door’s first making, sprinkled down from it.  

“Open up Jules!” Azof yelled.  “Or so help me, I’ll smash this door in!  Won’t take me a minute to get through this old thing!”

“Don’t you touch it!  Don’t you dare!” Julienne howled back at him, jumping to her feet and spoiling for a fight.  “I’m still needing that, to keep keeping the likes of you where you belong - outside!”

At that Azof seemed to subside.  “Let me in, Jules,” he said, in a much quieter voice.  “I gotta talk to you.  I’m – sorry!  I just want to say my piece, and I’ll go.”

Perhaps it was the long-awaited apology that did it.  A moment weighing the pros and cons, and the farmer’s wife began unfastening the many bolts and catches, taking her sweet time about it, too.

Azof was waiting in the darkness, just beyond the square of light that shone out from the kitchen lamps.  He came forwards as Julienne opened the door.

“I brung this for you,” the Orc announced, shuffling his feet.  He held out a messy-looking bouquet composed entirely of white flower sprays cut from blackthorn, commonly used in these parts for hedging, as it was a plant of unsurpassed spinyness that would quickly  grow into a dense and impenetrable stock-proof barrier.  

“You wanna watch - it’s got all jaggy bits,” he said, and as Julienne made no move to take the flowers, added sheepishly – “it got me a few times when I was picking it.”  

“People say it’s bad luck to take – that - in the house.”

“Wot’s that?”  The Orc frowned, curiously indignant.  “It’s only a bit of blackthorn!  I’d never have thought you’d be one for believing such a load of old rubbish!  Some folk reckon it’s a sign it’s going to get cold again when it flowers, an’ what kind of nonsense does that sound like to you?”

“Yes!” Julienne exclaimed, “they call it the blackthorn winter!  And look – blackthorn flowering!  Don’t you see how it’s snowing right now?”

And it was.  Great slushy flakes were pelting down from a dirty-looking, grey-black sky. 

“Yeah.  I s’pose. “  Azof conceded, and stamped his feet exaggeratedly.  “So you gonna let me come in for minute, eh?  Come on, Jules.  It’s bloomin’ freezing out ‘ere.”

Very much against her better judgement, Julienne stood aside to let him past.  The Orc entered, looking curiously around him and stood, radiating a faint odour of sweat and leather, rainwater and very unexpectedly – lye soap.  The back of his neck in particular had a peculiarly scrubbed look.  Julienne’s little living room suddenly seemed much smaller, and warmer, with Azof in it.

“You got a nice gaff,” he said approvingly.

Julienne shrugged.  It wasn’t as if he hadn’t spent enough time at the window, staring into her house before.

“’Ere.”  The Orc pushed his flower-bundle into Julienne’s hands.  “Mind an’ watch that.  You don’t wanna get yourself – pricked.”  He broke off abruptly then, unaccountably embarrassed.

The farmer’s wife had him sit at the kitchen table while she put the blackthorn in a jug of water.  Looking at the flowers more closely, Julienne supposed they were attractive enough in their own way.  They were creamy coloured, each with five petals and its own bristling brush of stamens spreading from the greenish-yellow throat.  The flowers were delicate, shaped like little, white, apple-blossoms, and – as they were now - in season, covered the rough black branches like bubbles clinging from a soap-bath, clothing them with a frothy, frivolous-looking layer.  In the house they gave out a subtle, sweet and dusty fragrance. 

“It’s - lovely, the way they come before the leaves, innit?” the Orc said seriously, watching Julienne as she examined them.  “I never saw any kind of flower what did that before.”

“That stuff grows everywhere.  I don’t think I’ve even looked at it closely before.”

“Me neither!  Not before I come to live here, anyways,” Azof’s replied, his voice eager.  Taking a drink from the mug Julienne had given him he spluttered, grimacing.  “’Ere, what’s this?”

“Herb tea.”

“Ain’t you got any ale in the ‘ouse?” Azof asked, grinning hopefully.  “Or maybe something a bit stronger.  Something to put hairs on your chest, eh?”

“Don’t drink ale,” Julienne said. 

“Forget I arsked,” Azof muttered. Taking a big swallow from the mug he smiled wanly.  “This is triffic.”

The sat for a minute in stilted silence.

Then Azof said, suddenly: “I told some of them others ones about you.”

“Other ones?”

“Oh, other Orcs,” he nodded.  “Nasty pieces of work.  Talked it up a bit too.  Made out we’d done a load of dirty stuff we’ve – not.”

Really, what else should she have expected from such a person as Azof?

Julienne sniffed.  “Then it’s lucky I’m not much fussed what anyone thinks of me, any more,” she said, and to her surprise, realized that this was largely true.  “I suppose that must go double for a load of Orcs I don’t even know.  No, I’ve had enough of all that rubbish.  Don’t even know why you’re bothering to tell me about it.”

Azof stared at her.  “Well sometimes I can be right arsehole, can’t I?  I know that.  But I _like_ you.  I liked you right from the off.  From that first minute when I was ‘iding in them trees and you seen me and you was well scared.  Most folk would have wanted to run and ‘ide, and I wouldn’t blame ‘em.  But you – you just stood there, effin’ and blinding at me.  I was well impressed. ”

 “I didn’t think I’d make it as far as the house,” Julienne said, faintly.

“You was wise not to run,” the Orc told her, very seriously.  “’Cos that’d’ve made me want to chase after you, wouldn’t it, and if that ‘appened, I mightn’t‘ve been able to stop.”

“Are you trying to frighten me, now?”

“Maybe.”  Azof was nonplussed.  “Maybe you _oughter_ be frightened -  I dunno.  Course, I don’t mean you any ‘arm, not at the moment.  That ain’t what I’m saying, ‘cause you must know I like you, I’ve said.  But sometimes things go pear-shaped.  Like - when you and me – you know, the other day.  In that wood.  Well, then I knew you proper liked me, too.  But afterwards, after I – went, well you was upset, wasn’t you?  And I knew I’d been a right arsehole over it.  So I thought, when I come ‘ere tonight I was gonna try an’ h’explain.  ‘Cause I been coming ‘ere under false pretences.  I ain’t no good to you Jules.  I ain’t no use, and that’s the long and short of it.”

This didn’t make a lot of sense to Julienne, and she waited for Azof to continue.

Azof laid his hands flat on the table.  “This is about the end of the war, right?  ‘Cos that’s when it come on – just after. ”

“Some of ‘em,” the Orc began, “the ones still in Mordor come the fall, had it worst.  I ‘eard half of them dropped in their tracks, and the other half lost their marbles on the spot.  Couldn’t take it.” 

“Anyway, me an’ my mate Dokuz, right, when the big stuff all kicked off we was a bit further out.  Reinforcements was coming, and we was part of the detail got sent ter meet ‘em at the coast.  But we felt it come the end all right, even from there.  Moment it ‘appened was like a big – jolt, or something, an’ we knew.  You couldn’t not know, really!  Put the wind up us and that lasted a while.”  Azof grunted, ruefully.   “We was pissing ourselves!  Got so bad we was scared of our own shadows.  Didn’t dare do anything but curl up and hide.  When that passed, we thought we was over the worst of it.”  He gave a weary sigh.  “We was well wrong as it turns out, wasn’t we?”

“First it was me ‘air,” Azof said.  “Oh yeah - I ‘ad proper hair in them days.  Full ‘ead of it what turned dead white in one night.  It started droppin’ out.  Stuff ’ud come away in great ‘andfuls, what fell into dust soon’s you touched it – blowing away like ash in your ‘ands.  Went on till I’m in the state you see me now - bald as a blimmin’ egg!  Same thing wiv Dokuz’s teef – come a few days after, and the ones at the back ‘ad crumbled away to nuffink.  ‘Orrible business.  It was like a - wave, or somethink - you know like when you drop poison, in the middle of a pond?  It found us, all the way from Mordor, only it took its time to spread.”   

Azof looked down at the table.  “An’ that weren’t the worst of it. Next time I went for a J. Arfur –“

Julienne tilted her head, mystified.

“Tried to pull on the plank.”

The farmer’s wife was still none the wiser.  

Leaping to his feet, the Orc paced back and forth in agitation.  “Don’t you gerrit?  Why d’you fink alls I do is stand there like a spare part an’ watch?  It’s all I _can_ do!”

“It,” he said, looking significantly at Julienne, so that she would be sure to understand what he was talking about, “don’t work no more.  You get what I’m talking about?” He made a vague chopping gesture downwards, from the middle of his body.  “Me candle.  The ‘old man’.  My todger.  It.  _It_.”  

Julienne did her best to look at anything, _anything_ other than the sadly-afflicted region of the Orc’s person and, failing utterly, gave it a brief, searching look.

“Oh yeah, it’s still _there_.  Ain’t you seen?  That time I got ‘im out for you, at the window?  I just can’t do nuffink with it.  Why d’you think I always go running off like that?  It’s so _embarrassing_ , is’n’it?”

“An’ it’s not cos’ I don’t wanna.  Cos’ I’d do it - I’d shag you, in a minute, if I could!  I’m not fussy  - I’d shag anyone, I would!”  Azof stopped and stood for a moment, frowning.  “Look, Jules, maybe that didn’t come out right.”

The Orc knelt down beside Julienne’s seat and gazed earnestly at her.  “But I’m no good for you,” he repeated.  “I can watch yer, an’ even if I get turned on like anythink – an’ I do, cos it’s lovely, watching you -  I don’t get ‘ard so I can’t do nuffink about it.  Can’t do nuffink wiv’ it.”

This was all a great deal to take in, and not quite knowing what to say to him, Julienne latched onto the first thought that occurred to her – something he’d touched on earlier in his tirade.

“When you left that day in the wood.  How did you know I got – upset, afterwards, then?”

“Eh?  Oh, ‘cos of I was keeping an eye on you from just up the ‘ill.”  Julienne stared at him.  “What!  It was getting late, and I had to make sure you’d get ‘ome safe.  There’s all sorts of weirdoes and dickheads – ruffians and foot-pads and all sorts ‘anging about.  And I was there when that cattle-trader, the wanker, tried to feel you up.  I was gonna clock ‘im one but you seemed well up for sorting it.”

“D’you know him then?” Julienne said, wondering how Azof had come to know how her cousin earned his living.

“Nah.” Azof scratched his head.  “I’ve maybe seen him around and about, that’s all.  He’s kin to your ‘usband, isn’t he?”

“Everyone round here’s kin to my husband!  You – you don’t know him as well, do you?”

“Alls I know is he’s a great bushy-bearded twat who turfed you out that ‘ouse of yours down the village so he could shack up wiv’ some ovver woman instead,” Azof replied, clearly indignant on Julienne’s behalf.

Azof’s interpretation of those painful events though gratifying, wasn’t strictly accurate.  “He never turfed me out, not really,” Julienne explained.  “I had to leave – but it was of my own free will.  Those two were all for me staying on after – like an unpaid housekeeper, I think.”   

“Your old man wants his head looking at,” Azof muttered, “seeing as he already ‘ad someone as nice as you.”

“But you’ve met him, have you?”

“Well he’s a farmer, isn’t he?” the Orc replied exasperatedly.  “I’m known to quite a few of the farmers round these parts.  But they ain’t no friends of mine,” he snarled, “and that goes both ways!”

He sat bristling for a moment and then added belatedly - “present company h’excepted, of course.  If I can still say that, now you know I’m such a dead loss.”

Poor Azof!  He was fishing, obviously, and Julienne shook her head at him.  But what a ridiculous situation!  The Orc had gotten ahead of himself, absurdly far in fact, and she had to struggle to suppress an almost overwhelming  impulse to burst out laughing at any moment.  Julienne wasn’t an unkind woman, and it was obvious that this would be exactly the wrong thing to do.

“I don’t know much about these things, Azof,” she told him, doing her best to sound sympathetic, “but this – problem, you say you’ve got.  I don’t think it’s all that out of the ordinary.  I think it just - happens, to some men sometimes.”

“Not to an Orc, it doesn’t!” Azof all-but wailed out.  “Unless the whole lot gets chopped off, I’ve never heard of anything remotely like this!”

“Maybe if you give it time, it’ll sort itself out.”

“But me hair!  It ain’t growing back at all!”

The Orc was so woebegone that Julienne couldn’t help but felt sorry for him.  Certainly it was unenviable, obviously distressing, this position he found himself in.  She reached out and ran a sympathetic hand over his scalp.  The skin was very warm and felt smooth, like polished leather.  There wasn’t even the slightest trace of stubble.

“Perhaps not having hair’s isn’t the worst thing in the world.”

“It’s not really me ‘air I’m worrying about though, is it?”  Azof sighed.  Huffing out a deep, shuddering breath he leaned in and rested his cheek against Julienne’s leg.  And it felt comfortable, like the most natural thing in the world for her to sit there petting him, for a time. 

Outside, the weather was picking up.  The wind whistled in the chimney and sent a chilly blast gusting down into the fireplace.  A log fell in the grate, dislodging a shower of glowing, half-charred fragments that clinked and pinked on the hearth stones as they cooled.  Looking down at the bald Orc with his head in her lap, Julienne couldn’t help but think of all the long, wintry miles that lay between Azof and wherever he intended to spend the rest of the night.  Of course, he’d come and gone under similar conditions before, but now he was here with her, indoors, the situation somehow seemed – different.  

“Azof,” Julienne said, “it’s getting late.  I’m going to be turning in, in a minute.  You can stop over, if you want.”

The Orc raised his head.  “You don’t want shot of me?”

“It’s the type of night you wouldn’t want to turn out a stray dog on,” the farmer’s wife replied.  “Yes, you can stay.”

This did however raise the question of  - ‘where.’

Following (and clearly anticipating) Julienne’s chain of thought, Azof said quickly – “you know, since me – trouble come on, I’ve been piling on the weight.  Can’t seem to stop stuffing me face.  So you probably don’t want to shove me in that out-house.”  He grinned at her.  “Better not leave me alone with all that ham.”

Julienne told him he was welcome to rest on the straight-backed kitchen settle, and the Orc flung himself back onto it, wincing exaggeratedly.  So it didn’t come as a complete surprise when Julienne, having readied herself for bed, heard the creak of a floorboard behind her as Azof came creeping into her bedroom.

“I couldn’t get comfy out there,” he protested.  “If I’d had to spend the night on that thing, I’d’ve ended up with a right crick in me back.  Come on, Jules.  You know I only want to be in here, with you.  Go on - I’ve been wanting to have a try-out of that big bed for ages!”  

There was enough room for him, certainly.  The bed-stead, though elderly, was easily large enough to accommodate two – even if the springs did dip alarmingly when Azof climbed in behind her.

“Mind and stay on top of the covers,” Julienne told him, firmly.

“Oh, yeah, I will,” Azof muttered, shuffling up beside her, very close.  The Orc snuffled his nose into the hair at the back of Julienne’s head, and gave a contented-sounding rumble, deep in his chest.   “I’ll behave myself,” he promised.  “I’ll be no trouble.  Honest.”

 

TBC


	6. A certain spring

 

The arm Azof had thrown around her waist during the night was now under the bedclothes, under Julienne’s nightdress, and was rubbing in warm, slow circles over her stomach. The Orc himself was pressed tight behind her.  During the night he had climbed under the blankets and as he had at some point also removed his shirt, his upper body and arms were bare.  He was radiating a great deal of body-heat and on a chilly morning it felt warm, and almost indecently comfortable to have him lying beside her.

“Thought you said you were going to behave yourself,” the farmer’s wife mumbled.

“That was last night,” Azof grumbled, “an’ I was out of sorts.  Come on, Jules.  Ain’t you feeling frisky yet?”  Now he was carrying out a thorough, one-handed exploration of her breasts, breaking off from time to time to pinch a nipple, squeezing and rolling it languorously between his fingertips.  

“That’s good, yeah?  Used to like to do it sometimes when I was bringing meself off, too.”

The Orc’s teeth nibbled along her shoulder, down to the angle of her neck.  He seemed to have a definite affinity for this general area and licked, and nuzzled, and bit, his hot, damp, breath sending delightful shivers running down her spine.  

 “Didn’t you ever lie ‘ere, thinking about me an’ touching yourself up?  ‘Cos it’s def’nitely what I’d’ve wanted to’ve done.”

“Maybe,” the farmer’s wife said.  Of course she’d indulged in nothing of the sort.

Azof groaned.  “Oh!  I’d’ve loved to’ve been ‘ere an’ seen that.  Go on Jules – show me what you done.”

Drowsily Julienne moved the Orc’s hand down her body, guiding his fingers to gently circle round and around the outside of her sex.  

“Soft and – slow, like that?”

Julienne nodded briefly, biting her lips.

“You wanted it rougher the other day, though, didn’t c’her?” Azof whispered, in her ear.  “I couldn’t believe it, when you come off just from me using me ‘and.”

Distractedly, Julienne muttered that that had been the other day, and now, things were different.

“Is that right?” the Orc seemed intrigued.  “If you’re a bloke it’s more of what you’d call an all or nuffink experience.”

In its way it was arousing, but - if only he’d stop talking, now!

“Azof!”  Keeping his hand in place with her own hand plus the pressure of her thighs, Julienne rolled onto her back, caught the back of Azof’s neck in the crook of her other arm and pulled him down and kissed him on the mouth.

The Orc grunted in surprise.  It took him a moment to respond and when he did, it was with far more enthusiasm than a polished technique.  Their teeth clashed together and he had no idea what to do with his tongue.  He fumbled, messily, with his lips.

Julienne didn’t care.   Gasping her arousal into Azof’s half-open mouth she moved herself against him, shifted his fingers to press either side of the point that created the most exquisite pressure –

“There?  You want me there, yeah?” 

Julienne moaned as the tension built, and built.  She seized hold of the Orc’s hand, kept it in place with her own, trembling and shaking against him. 

“Yeah?” Azof flicked his thumbnail experimentally over the most sensitive area, then smoothed over and around it with the pad of his thumb; rubbed and flicked and kept rubbing and flicking until the tension that had been building peaked.  As it finally broke it sent out a burst of sharply pleasurable sensation and the farmer’s wife gave an inarticulate cry.

If she’d opened her eyes she’d have seen the Orc staring, wide-eyed, at her.  He made a soft sound of disbelief, low in his throat.  “Jules!”

Afterwards, breathing heavily and wincing a bit, he carefully withdrew his hand, which looked cramped, noting wryly, that  –

 “You had a good, tight, grip on it.”  Flushing, Julienne began to apologize.

“Nah.  Nah,” he said, very earnestly, staring into her eyes .  “I liked it.”  He bussed her wetly on the cheek.  “Seeing you like that - it was brilliant.”

They lay together for a time, quite contented.  Then - 

“Now, what’s for breakfast?”  Azof said.

“Bacon and eggs.”  Julienne supposed he had earned himself a bite of breakfast, if nothing else.  Even if it had been entirely too pleasurable, lazing in bed with him. 

“I’ll gerrit.  Fetch it to you,” Azof said.  “Back in a jiff.”  And it was no idle offer either; the Orc was out of bed with his shirt on and was already half-way through the door.  “You’ll want yours cooked, yeah?”

“Yes, please.  The frying pan’s on the –“

“On the kitchen windowsill.  Yeah.  I know.”                                                                                        

“You know your way around the kitchen?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that, but I can find me way round _yours_.” (Of course he could.  After all those nights he’d spent, looking in.)  “Dunno about proper cooking, but I’m up to frying a couple slices of bacon.”

The farmer’s wife had to allow that he was.  The rashers were beautifully cut as thin, even slices from the belly-portion she’d smoked in the chimney - because it came as no real surprise that the Orc’s knife-skills were top-notch - and he fried them to a perfect, delicate crispness.  The eggs also passed muster and if the bread he’d toasted was a little scorched, then the fact of Azof having even attempted to cook for her – much less than him having delivered an eatable result – more than made up for that. 

Feeling slightly stunned, Julienne had lain in bed, listening to the Orc clattering around her kitchen.  At one point he’d gone outside, where she could hear him splitting kindling to stoke up the fire in the stove.

As she lay there, listening to him, Julienne tried to remember the last time someone had brought her breakfast in bed.  Actually she couldn’t recall such a thing as ever happening, and later said as much to Azof.

He gave her an odd look.  “M’used to shifting for meself.  Don’t need to ‘ave no-one runnin’ round after me.”

Except for up hill and down dale, those times he’d had her chasing him across the countryside, the farmer’s wife thought, but made no comment, wisely.

There may have been an ulterior motive behind Azof having served Juliene with breakfast in bed however, as afterwards he climbed right back in with her.

Julienne shook her head, regretfully.  “I can’t stay here with you all day, Azof,” she told him.  “There’s things I have to do.”

He gave a truculent rumble.  “Wot _things_.”

“Well – the chickens need letting out, for one.”

 “Done it,” Azof sounded pleased with himself.  “An’ I filled the water bucket in the field with them sheep.  An’ fed the cat. ”

The farmer’s wife wondered at what point he’d become so familiar with her list of morning tasks.

“Few times I was here you maybe didn’t see me,” he explained.  “When that farm-lad come round.  Thought you mightn’t want to let on I’d been ‘anging about.”

Giving in for once to an impulse of pure indolence, Julienne relaxed back against him.  He’d already seen to the most pressing chores, so it couldn’t hurt to linger a little longer, surely?  The Orc’s arms wrapped round her immediately and he grumbled out one of his deep-voiced grunts of satisfaction, holding her tight, clutching her close.

In due course and predictably enough, his hands began wandering, once again.   For a while Azof occupied himself in playing with the ends of the ribbon at the neck of Julienne’s nightgown. The long row of buttons closing it at the front were next, and kneeling beside her in the bed  - working clumsily at first - he began unfastening them one by one.  Smoothing the fabric carefully back as he exposed more and more of her, he began mouthing and licking a warm trail down the centre of Julienne’s body.     

It was difficult for Julienne not to feel self-conscious, under such close and intense scrutiny, but she tried to keep in mind that her form had been pleasing enough  to Azof when he was looking through the window at her, before.  When he stopped, just around the level of her waist she had only time for a flash of doubt; her figure was still trim enough, certainly, but the skin there was not in the best condition, being in places loosened, and scored with rows of faint, silvery striations -    

“What’s all this?” Azof exclaimed, seemingly not so much disgusted, as concerned.  “Never seen nuffing like this before.  Was someone trying to – hurt you, or somethink?”

Julienne explained that such markings were sometimes left at the end of a woman’s pregnancy.   

“You’ve ‘ad kids?” the Orc seemed surprised.  “Ain’t seen any of yours round ‘ere - or down the village, neither.  Where they to, then?”

“Oh, they’re gone,” the farmer’s wife said.

Azof drew himself up abruptly.  Crouching beside her he narrowed his eyes.  “So they was killed,” he said slowly, “in the War?”

“No!  They’ve gone – gone _away_ , that’s all.  First chance I got I sent them far as I could from here.   One’s apprenticed with my sister’s husband.  The other’s on a trading boat, out at sea.  They’re  doing well.  They write when they can.  I get letters, sometimes.”

The Orc nodded understandingly.  “But you didn’t want to ‘ave them round you?”

“’Of course I did!  What I didn’t want was them staying in this forsaken place to be farmers who marry their own cousins!”

“Huh!”  Azof relaxed again, pulled her back against his chest; waited a moment and then, almost casually, stuck his hand back down the front of her dress.

They drew apart much later.

“Gotta go,” Azof told her, regretfully.  “Better show me face at some point or them lot’ll get their knickers in a right twist.”

“You’re needing to check in?” Julienne said. “Up on that - mountain?”

“Nah.  There’s somethink else I gotta see about.  But,” he went on hopefully, “it’s not far an’ I won’t be long.  What d’you think about me maybe coming back here, after?”

As much as she insisted to herself that she was completely indifferent to Azof, as well as his various comings and goings, Julienne couldn’t deny her pleasure at the prospect of seeing him again so soon.  She had to bite the inside of her cheeks to stop herself from out-and-out beaming back at him.

“All right, Azof,” she said, mildly.  “That might be nice.”

He was back just after dark.

Julienne was swept off her feet, literally, as the Orc rushed in to greet her.  He picked her up against his chest and carried her over to the kitchen table, not breaking their embrace as he set her down on the edge of it.  With a low moan of relief, he began kissing her, clumsily.

“Oh, Jules, I’ve missed you,” he muttered, close against her neck.

And he’d only been gone for the afternoon!

“Well?” Azof said.  “Felt loads longer than that, didn’t it?”  

He delivered more kisses, onto the sides of Julienne’s face, along her jaw, and then hesitantly, her mouth.  “Did you not miss me, even a little bit?”

Julienne took her time before answering, pulling him back and deepening the kiss in a way that made Azof catch his breath and groan.   “Might’ve done,” she said, “I suppose.”

Azof clasped her tightly.  “All I could think about was being wiv’ you, in bed again.”

The farmer’s wife tried to quell a delightful, if not completely ladylike shiver of anticipation as she thought about what was likely to go on after she and the Orc returned to bed.  As before, when in Azof’s company, all at once Julienne found that she was felt very aware of herself, of her feminine portions, and all the sensuous, bodily desires that had been for so long overlooked.

The sudden feeling of exposure was too much, and feeling overwhelmed, she had to turn away.  A retreat to mundane, if more familiar, wifely ground helped her regain a little of her composure.

“There’s –  dinner, if you want it,” she said.  

If the Orc was wrong-footed by her abrupt change of subject, it lasted only for a moment.   Cocking his head he said -

“You’ve made dinner?  For me?”

“If you don’t fancy it, it’s only broth.  Vegetables, mostly.”

“No – no, I’ll ‘ave it,” he said quickly, grinning.  “Better keep me strength up, eh?”  He came and stood very close again, nuzzling, butting his nose, his lips, against Julienne’s cheeks.  Looking into her eyes, he added very seriously - “and then bed, eh?”

The farmer’s wife blushed.  “All right, Azof.  That might be nice.”

 

TBC


End file.
